The Politics of Grammar Schools

Thank you for the post GiftedPhoenix. Your blog was an interesting read, particularly if, like me, you live in an area that still has grammar schools. It inspired me to do a little rough research of my own. Not exactly random double blind but still!

I looked at the league tables by LEA in the Daily Telegraph ranked by GCSE results and A level results. The results are per head across the authority. I cross referenced it with a Wikipedia list of existing grammar schools. The top LEAs for GCSEs and A levels were dominated by areas where grammar schools still exist like Sutton, Bromley, Kingston, Barnet, Trafford and Redbridge. As the results are per head it suggests that all pupils do better, not as quoted by HMCI Wilshaw in your blog that the grammar 10% do well and everyone else does really badly. It would reinforce local anecdotal evidence here in Altrincham. Not all children take the entrance exams, and not everyone passes them, so those children go to excellent local comprehensive schools. Children who 'just fail' the exams are top of the comprehensive school and have all the confidence that entails, instead of being just average if the grammar pupils hadn't been 'creamed off'. So we have an extra group of children who are the 'top performers' in their school who get excellent results too.

More interesting reading is a report on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's website, jrf.org.uk. 'Poorer children's educational attainment: how important are attitudes and behaviour? It tries to explore the reasons why poorer children perform less well than wealthier ones. One quote from page 7 says 'Nearly one fifth of the gap in test scores between the richest and poorest children is explained by an apparent ‘direct’ link between the childhood cognitive ability of parents and that of their children.' So in addition to the schools themselves we need to look at the child's home environment. Schools are not the sole determiners of success.

Your figures are wrong for Bucks in your blog because you have not read the latest out of county percentages attending Bucks Grammar schools. These can be 40% plus so you cannot look at those attending Bucks grammar schools and assume they are a percentage of the Bucks school population. They are not. In the Aylesbury Vale area, only 16% of pupils gained a grammar school place this year before appeal. There is lots of press coverage of this in the Bucks Herald news on line. You might like to read it. This figure is likely to increase after appeals. The newspaper article wonders why Aylesbury Vale has such a low pass rate, but it is only the Head of Chesham Grammar that suggests that Aylesbury Vale children nay not attain so highly in their schools as children elsewhere in the county, or the vast numbers coming into the grammar schools from other counties.

There was a lot of pressure on the new Bucks 11plus exam to deliver FSM children into the grammar schools. This has plainly not happened and coaching and private education are still delivering the better off to the grammar schools. It is about time all children were coached in school, preferably at after school clubs. At least then there would be no excuses for under achievement. The new test is supposed to be based more closely on the curriculum but that makes it even more open to tuition in the opinion of some. A lot of this would not matter if there were first class secondary modern schools to go to, but lots of these are RI. Few are good on a consistent basis. The Guardian did a good article on the Bucks situation recently.

Talkin. As you know a Secondary Modern school, can still be a good school and enable its pupils to achieve high standards. Talkin Whether you believe in selective or non selective education, I think it needs to be said that don't castigate a school just because it happens to be non selective in a grammar area.

In hindsight there was nothing wrong with my DDs1 Modern school. (she still got to her 1st choice University) through like many I was worried and believed my preconceptions about modern schools based on my own modern schooling. The fact that DD1 was happy at her school, made it the right school for her .

Talkin also knows that in East Kent or Kent in general, grammar schools are part of the furniture and will never be abolished. I think one of the reasons why Michael Fallon has given support to the expansion of grammar school education in his constituency with the "Weald of Kent" satellite in Sevenoaks is to counter act any potential swing to Ukip in his area.

Please could you ask MNHQ to retitle your thread
The politics of Secondary Modern Schools
as that is the underbelly that promoters of segregated schooling choose to ignore

I just don't think it is possible to have a sensible discussion about social mobility and selection, without discussing all means of selection; religious, financial, geographical, academic and performing arts. Grammar schools are just a small part of the whole selective education pproblem (or not if you support it).